FASHIONMEN

Monuments Men of Fashion

Caribbean people are a living contradiction

Anthony Best | Gus Franklyn-Bute

Updated July 2020

ACU|BIEN examines Masculinity, Sexuality, and Gender motifs in the Monuments Men of Fashion and asks, “does what a man chooses to wear express or alter his masculinity?

Monuments Men of Fashion

The cortège of men sauntering around the piazza at Somerset House in streetwear and urban designs always bring the best in leading-edge swagger to London Fashion Week. This fringe fashion circuit injects cultural aesthetics and originality into one of the world’s premier fashion events. Whatever Miranda Priestley (The Devil Wears Prada) may have declared, style is democratic and an individual’s irrefutable choice.  Style is self-expression and at times an act of defiance spiced with a generous measure of indifference. Collectively, designers, curators, advocates, stylists, and off-runway disrupters form the Monuments Men of Fashion.

ACUBIEN MMOF LFW-2019
London Fashion Week Men’s | Photo: Adrian Richards Photography

Monuments Men of Fashion: Hypermasculinity in florals and furs

The convergence at London Fashion Week Men’s of the male of the species, groomed and draped in prints, florals, furs, and even a fox, blurs the lines of gender stereotypes. This creditable expo commands re-examination of what are acceptable codes of masculinity. The Monuments Men of Fashion push boundaries of race, culture, and identity – none more so than for audacious black men who are burdened with problematic cultural taxonomies of hypermasculinity and sexuality. Photographer Adrian Richards understands the challenges of race, culture, and identity in the Caribbean. Richards, widely experienced in international and Caribbean fashion as a photographer, remarked that “current trends [in men’s fashion] that incorporate prints and floral, as well as design pieces like the man-skirt and unstructured draperies adds further to the conundrum.

Monuments Men of Fashion: Inferiority and Erotic Worship

Black boys are born into a culture where black identity was massacred by the double-edged sword of slavery and colonialism. The moral paternalism of marauding western despots was justified by a syllabus of assorted religious doctrines that gave legitimacy to anthropological theories of white superiority. Black women and men had to know the position assigned to them by divine providence or else… In simple terms, black male identity hemorrhaged as black culture became infested with fear, denial, and inferiority. Current narratives of black hypermasculinity are grounded in the ruthless, physical, and psychological emasculation sponsored by agencies of the state, crown, commerce, and church. The male ego was salved by white erotic worship. Black men became trapped at the conflating intersection of the “Mandingo” persona and reduction to the “boy’, “nigga” identity.

It was and still is to fashion that black men turned to express individuality and proclaim their masculinity. After six days toiling on cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations in dirty, tattered Osnaburg rags, a day off was the only opportunity to preen and parade donning the ‘Sunday best’. Wilbert L. Cooper and Awol Erizku’s excellent article “The Evolution of Black Masculinity Through Fashion” deals beautifully with these realities.

Monuments Men of Fashion: Straddling lines like “Willie Dynamite”

As black men wrestled to assert their identity through fashion over the decades, many monikers have been coined to characterise their masculinity, sexual prowess, style, and sense of cool. The black man has been the saga boy, homeboy, rudeboy, dude, nigga, superfly, gangster, cat, pimp, boss man, blud, and dawg. The 1970s is arguably the pinnacle when lines of black masculinity, gender, and fashion were most blurred. A casual probe through Blaxploitation movies offers a superb biopic on the subject. The film Willie Dynamite (1974), starring Roscoe Orman as Willie and Diana Sands as Cora is one of the best examples of the fluid boundaries of stereotypical masculinity, sexuality, power, and gender motifs in black culture and fashion.

In music too, black male entertainers celebrated their fashion styling while acting out their talents: Larry Blackman, lead singer for American soul-funk band Cameo was famous for his shiny red codpiece, skintight chaps, and even tighter all-revealing black leggings. The prodigious Prince and his androgynous style never really raised a serious eyebrow from an adoring and respectful public. James Brown’s straightened afro and flamboyance was part of his hypermasculine identity – his sexuality was never in question. You never saw more eyeliner on a black man than Little Richard”, according to Anthony Best.

Caribbean People: Superiority and Outdated Ethics

London Fashion Week | Photo: Adrian Richards Photography

To state the obvious, Caribbean communities were artificially forged through brute force, inhumane notions of white superiority, and victorian values of the three C’s: Colonialism, Christianity and Cricket. It is no surprise that Caribbean men, women, and institutions continue to exist in unfettered denial, fear, and insecurity of the “other”. Caribbean people continue to cling desperately to outmoded principles of what is masculine, not least in fashion – a democratic and individual form of self-expression. While these f**ked-up ethics have their roots in Western Europe, unlike the Caribbean, western countries are actively modifying and advancing their legal and moral codes by re-calibrating, de-labeling, and encouraging individual freedom of expression,  creativity, and co-existence.  The overwhelming outcome of a national referendum on gay marriage in Catholic Ireland is a recent example.

Adrian Richards further adds that “this is a useful discussion and I feel that CARIBBEAN men are socialized to be peacocks, yet have issues in being expressive because of fear about being perceived as being gay.”

Caribbean Region: Contractions and Hypocrisy

It is frequently argued that Caribbean people are a living contradiction and a society of hypocrites. From island to island men straddle the gender line when they openly throw on and elaborate ornate costumes, paint and glitter their bodies during the carnival season in costumes fit for a Victoria Secrets runway. Yet, any man judged to be dressed ‘too femininely’ runs the risk of attack, ridicule, or abuse. In “fag hating” Jamaica, men have been bleaching their skin and readily adopted homo-esque fashion trends like low-hanging to the skinny jeans that sport fat ass cleavages to show off fake designer underwear to wearing the tightest skinny jeans. Anthony Best adds that “pants can’t get any tighter in Jamaica. You see more straight guys’ asses than gays on the street.” These non-traditional ways of dressing prove that even hyper-homophobic and machismo Caribbean masculinity is indeed fluid.

London Fashion Week | Photo: Adrian Richards Photography

Monuments Men of Fashion: Masculinity, Sexuality, Homophobia, and Ancestry

London Fashion Week LCM SS15 | Credit: Adrian Richards Photography
London Fashion Week | Photo: Adrian Richards Photography

Vicious attacks and homophobia have less to do with masculinity and gender assignment and much to do with ignorance, fear, and insecurity among global communities struggling to clear their colonial hangover. The nail-gripping adherence to outdated codes of masculinity disrespects and disregards African and Amerindian ancestors who were no less a people for wearing tribal attire, at times naked, baring genitals and all. Indeed, men often wore the most elaborate ceremonial garb in peacock fashion and are perhaps the founding Monuments Men of Fashion.

To paraphrase James Baldwin like Wilbert L. Cooper, ‘people are trapped in anachronistic notions of masculinity, and this masculinity is trapped in them.

 

 

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